#but sometimes Relatable really is a fuckin great experience and i don't think its bad for people to seek that out

[aplpaca]

"wanting fiction to be relatable is selfish" my dude you can advocate for people getting outside of their own perspectives (a good thing) without implying that the human desire to be understood and empathized with is vapid and bourgeois

#like im of agreement with that one post that's like ''Resonant is a better word for what i want in a book than Relatable'' #but sometimes Relatable really is a fuckin great experience and i don't think its bad for people to seek that out #esp bc mainstream society leaves a lot of people in the dust in that regard #like if you're refusing to try stuff that doesn't seem ''relatable'' or saying stuff is objectively bad bc it wasn't personally relatable #then you should maybe expand your horizons and stop treating your own experiences as the hallmark of quality #but wanting to feel seen isnt a bad thing. #different stories can serve different purposes and someone enjoying the relatability of one can enjoy the different perspective of another #theyre not mutually exclusive like so many posts seem to portray them

[mellyncholly]

tagged by my buddy stark (@lastquincy) to do this one! thank you :)

last song i heard:

"honey i'm home" by destroy boys. this was the only song from destroy boys (current favorite band) that i hadn't heard until a few days ago when bluejay literally made me listen to it and WOWWW. extremely catchy and the lyrics hit hard as fuck for me.

favorite color:

wouldn't you believe it. it's red. shades of red that could be classified as 'blood' or 'wine' are esp my favorites, and i also really like black. i started wearing more colors in 2023 (red, of course) but recently i've been leaning more into dressing punk and wearing mostly black.i love black

my favorite shades. however im a little bit twisted and i REALLY like any shade of red that is purely R and has no Gs or Bs.

this is a fucking angel to me ok.

last watched series:

my last watched "series" in general would technically be the walten files since a new one came out. by god those files really are walten. specifically in terms of TV though right now i'm watching the sopranos and sometimes mr. robot from time to time, both very good i'm enjoying them a lot especially the latter, although i think my last complete TV series was black mirror. some episodes weren't all too great in comparison to others but for the most part i really enjoyed it.

sweet/spicy/savory:

i'm very much a savory person. the taste is always so great but there is also something that feels so fulfilling about eating something savory compared to something that is sweet or spicy. i do enjoy a little sweetness or a little spice in my food sometimes though. writing this and thinking about food made me go boil a pot of water i want ramen so bad.

relationship status:

i'm single (SHGOULDN'T BE!!!!!) but i'm looking to try and meet people soon. i'm still a little unsure of my sexuality (probably bi lesbian?) but i'm almost certain of the person i am and who i wanna be so that's good. expressing myself sexually has become really important to me so even finding a fwb partner would be nice.

last thing i googled:

the last thing i googled was 'is ramen considered savory'. i was googling a lot of questions about what's considered 'savory' because i saw that question about preference between sweet and spicy and savory and immediately forgot what foods are classified as savory. i don't know how food works

current obsession:

oh my god don't even get me started. it's a four-way between signalis, monument mythos, walten files, and undertale right now. however i'd argue that walten files is only growing again right now and monument mythos for me is always a constant because i love it that much, so currently it would probably be signalis or undertale. i replayed undertale for the first time in at least 7 years in the last couple weeks and it was incredible especially because i could finally understand a lot of stuff i didn't understand or pick up on before, i vaguely got it when i was younger but i never picked up on the deeper, subtle characterization of so many of the characters and all of the details. undertale is an absolute masterpiece. another masterpiece i've been obsessed with is signalis. signalis was my first survival horror and it was an incredible, tense, tear-jerking experience. its such a beautiful and horrifying game about women and sapphic love and uuuuUUGGH it's PERFECT. the soundtrack is beautiful, amazingly composed and performed, the graphics are perfect for the vibe it's trying to go for. the characters all have fun designs and the main characters and story are all so intriguing it just keeps me thinking about the metaphorical themes of it all. signalis is a huge inspiration to me and i have so many thoughts about it please check it out.

last thing i read:

the last thing i read was chainsaw man! i LOVE chainsaw man and it's another massive inspiration for me...asa mitaka makes me feel so fuckin happy. autistic high school girl that i relate to so deeply. last time i read it, the story left off at a pretty big point so i should definitely pick it back up again before i start getting far behind again. the story was going somewhere that i thought was extremely interesting so i'm excited to see how it continues.

something i've been looking forward to:

in the long-term, i'm looking forward to a lot of things in the summer! i'm turning 21, going on a road trip to see a concert and visit a friend across the state, going to anthrocon, and maybe doing some stuff for pride! i'll be doing all of this with two of my best friends in the world and i'm really excited, although i am definitely nervous about the road trip since i'll be the one driving but i think it'll be OK since i'll have my friends with me :) i think this summer will be great because of all of the above but this also feels like it's gonna be the first summer where i won't be almost entirely focused on my job and i feel like myself!

i don't have anyone in particular that i want to tag for this but if you want, feel free to make a post like this :)

#melly screams #photo from a long walk i took a few days ago #might be a little less coherent around the end there. its 3 am ive been working on this on and off for a few hours

[plantanarchy]

do you think you could talk a little about being autistic? im wondering if i might be autistic and im still not sure bc i like pass as neurotypical rlly well so far and i thought it would help to hear about actual people's experiences. you don't have to though and im sorry if this is weird!!

This has been in my inbox for a bit, I’m sorry! But yeah, I can talk about it. Keep in mind that everyone’s experience is different and its less of a “spectrum” from mild to severe/low to high functioning and more of a complex where different people have different experiences. A lot of people use functioning labels to dismiss the experience and opinions of “high functioning” folk when it comes to being autistic because tjey “don’t seem autistic” or “aren’t like those other low functioning autistic people”, but really “function” is relative and can even change day to day… on someone’s bad days they could be totally nonverbal rocking back and forth and on good days pass better at neurotypical than I do…

Ok so, I was diagnosed with Aspergers when I was ~10. I was essentially non-verbal in school and other high stress social situations and had been since I was very very young. This was interpreted as “very shy!” despite me having severe difficulty from a young age in saying anything at all to teachers, doctors, church people, even many of my peers, etc and often feeling like i was physically unable to speak but you know… because I spoke at home and with my neighborhood friends, I wasn’t considered non-verbal at all. Or I guess selective mutism is the correct term which is something I definitely still struggle with. Like when I was in middle school, I spent a few years literally being known by my mom’s friends and by some people at school as “Meep” because thata fuckin all I could physically say when somebody tried to talk to me haha

BUT ok that got away from me, point being: i was diagnosed with Aspergers at a young age which is a diagnosis that no longer exists/has been absorbed into the greater Autism diagnosis. Aspergers was separate for a long time because it was basically used to say “these kids are high functioning and different than those low functioning non communicative kids!”. Basically because I had most of the “cool and good” autism traits, my “not as cool and kinda crippling” autism traits and needs got shoved aside and essentially ignored for a long, long time. Which I think happens to a lot of kids! Even to the point of not getting a diagnosis at all or getting a wrong diagnosis and only realizing later in life what may be going on and what was missed.

Whoops before this becomes a bitter tangent, back to my experience of autism I guess. Ok, so on top of still being selectively verbal/mute (some days are worse than others and sometimes it isn’t even directly anxiety related it’s just a mostly mute day), my other symptoms include 1) it’s almost physically painful to make eye contact with anyone 2) formal social situations are beyond me, I never know what is correct or what’s coming next and usually I survive informal social situations by cracking jokes and making weird references to shit or being obnoxious and just accepting the label of “weird ass obnoxious kid but that’s just bre” 3) usually feel like I’m just two steps away from understanding what’s going on in some social situations lol like sometimes i have good intuition, can read people, can guess at what they’re thinking and then something happens that makes me question my entire interpretation of the situation and I realize maybe I wasn’t reading them correctly the whole time!!!! It’s the social equivalent of being the only one to get a wrong answer on a math problem and frantically rechecking your work lol 4) sensory overload yayyyyy when too many things happen at once (which can be like… 2 thing), I zone out and feel like my environment is unreal or blurry (fun and cool dissociation) and I can never predict what will cause that overload or when but also a lot of people have the very dramatic “autistic child screaming from sensory overload” image in their brain and thats not always accurate… my overload results in shut down 5) also along with that, I have sensory issues such as texture, sounds, etc. Certain fabrics as a kid would legit make me cry if I touched them or if my mom made me wear them (WINDBREAKERS ARE SENSORY HELL) and that still happens lol also with stuff like… chewing sounds, shoes that touch my toes in any way, loud music/bass, etc 6) along with that and with sensory overload… stimming. Stimming is basically a self-regulatory response to overwhelming stimuli and plenty of non-autistic people also do similar things when faced with high anxiety situations. Like foot jiggling, pencil tapping, nail biting, pencil chewing, etc it’s basically a soothing compulsion and not always something many autistic people can control without great effort and that control comes at the cost of not regulating anxieties or sensory overload well. I’ve got and always have had a lot of verbal/language stims and am very reptitive in my speech and writing patterns (y'all and lad anyone???) which is kinda self soothing. I have literally always had catchphrases. When im on my own i also do rock baxk and forth and other repititive body motions, also fidgeting with objects, especially cool round objects 7) catalog all the useless info in my brain!!! I can memorize information very well (not numbers though) and when I was a kiddo that got me labelled as #gifted and I was “savant” level in reading and writing but that is less cool and fun to people than beinf a math or science savant or something. 8) anyway related to that, as evidenced by this blog, I get VERY INVESTED in certain topics/ “special interests” to the point that it eclipses all other thoughts in my brain yay!!! Which isn’t a bad thing, I mean it gets me through and also if you have “good” special interests, people think you’re smart and interesting and ask your advice about stuff lol

Symptoms I don’t have that a lot of people think of when they think of an autistic person 1) I am horrendous at math I fuckin hate it numbers are the devil!!!!!! 2) 99% of my humor is sarcasm and I can understand it and figures of speech lol though sometimes i do get it wrong if i can’t read you otherwise 3) I don’t have “zero empathy”, I can feel for the plights of others VERY strongly, and can usually see any (most) POVs if it’s explained to me

There are others probably and there are certainly autistic people who have thise traits and who have different traits than I have. There are LOADS of different ways to be autistic. But also, there’s a lot of overlap between autism and between other things like ADHD, anxiety disorders, etc! So keep that in mind. Some people are strongly anti-selfdiagnosis of autism but knowing how easy it can be for kids who don’t present 100% stereotypically to slip through the cracks, I am all for it. I pass a lot of the time as neurotypical and can do most society things ok, though I have a steep learning curve compared to others… and with passing as neurotypical comes the frequent dismissal of my opinion on autism related topics and the lack of acknowledgement that actually I often DON’T pass as neurotypical and at those times my lack of passing is interpreted as rudeness, deliberate lack of effort on my part, stubbornness, lack of intelligence, lack of professionalism, an assumption that I’m angry with someone or don’t like them, etc etc. It’s an endless, awful cycle!

And I don’t really have too much personal advice for figuring out if you’re autistic or not… I did go through a point in time where despite being diagnosed I strongly denied that I was autistic and kind of had to come back to that as a near adult and realize nope… definitely autistic. And then knowing what to do with that info once youve figured it out is just… I mean there’s not much. There are little to no resources for autistic adults, very few support groups made up of autistic people and led by autistic people, very little resources directed at autistic people themselves in general, usually the focus is on the parents or guardians and talk aboit autistic people as abstract concepts… whoops, can you tell I’m bitter haha gonna end this before I go full “mental health professionals failed me and I’m a mess” etc